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Show QeSFuf t CIO MIGO CllSG? : By JANET LOWE Halloween is here again time for goblins, ghouls and witches. It's time to don sheets and masks and pretend that scarey things walk the night and that witches fly on broomsticks across a full mooa THE WITCH idea, for most of us is a joking matter. We laugh and watch a nose-twitching, nose-twitching, mischievous television witch, and love to be frightened by tales of transfigurations and exor-cisims. exor-cisims. But it hasn't always been that way, and even for some religious sects today, witches and witchcraft are nothing to laugh about. IF witchcraft hasn't been particulary funny, the accusation ac-cusation of being a witch was even less hilarious. In Salem, Mass., six men and 13 women died for witchcrafting, and though that was a dark blot on American history, it was a ' mere episode compared to the carnage in medieval Europe. ON A single day in 1641 in Molna, Sweden, 23 adults and 15 children were burned at the stake. Nine hundred perished at Bamburg between 1609 and 1633. For ten years, the Duchy of Brunswick witnessed an average of ten executions a day. The French Judge Nicholas Remy personally sentenced 900 witches to be burned at the stake. SOME CITY gates became charred forests and other towns turned witch burning into a carnival-like event. Confessions were wrung out by the cruelest imaginable tortures. One inquisitor boasted that he could make the Pope himself confess to witchcraft if he could only reach him. IN England, where torture was illegal, the legal tests were enough to cause some despairing women to destroy themselves when they heard they had been accused. While witch hunts did include men and children as well as women, by far the most frequent victims were female. THOMAS Szasz, who has written extensively about the social interactions of oppressors oppres-sors and the oppressed, suggests sug-gests that many explanations of the witch theory make "the terrifyingly simple but all important fact of man's inhumanity to man (and I add, to women( ... the image of the knight in armor, the symbol of mobility and of the black witch as a symbol of depravity embodies the sexocidal hatred of women . . . (for the) knight is always male (and the) witch is always al-ways female in all the fairy tales and mythologies of (medieval and modern) times." It seems incredible that a deep-seated, religiously-based religiously-based hatred of women could reach such extreme propor-tions, propor-tions, yet the information available seems to lend : strength to the proposition. NOT ONLY were the supposed sup-posed Salem witches predominantly female, but most were women who did not conform to the accepted standards stan-dards of femininity. One was a black West Indian slave who told voodoo tales to children; another a penniless, pipe-smoking pipe-smoking beggar; one didn't attend church regularly and was suspected of loose living; a fourth was a ribald, inn-keeping inn-keeping widow. During the witch frenzy in Europe, many fingers were truly pointed in fear. . .but there were uglier motives as well. Political expediency prompted the accusations of such notable women as Joan of Navarre and Elizabeth Woodville. ANN Leviston was charged with murder by witchcraft because someone wanted to break a will which left her the alleged victim's property, while Alice Nutter seems to have been the victim of greed on the part of her own children and revenge on the part of her judge. Despite the hysteria of the past and the vogue of witchcraft themes in literature litera-ture and movies today, there still remains much doubt about the real existence of witches. Historically, when r new religion arises, the gods of the old faith become the witches of the new. THE Christian church didn't easily stamp out the practices and superstitions of pagan times. Though demon lore and religious fanatics describe the devil as the Prince of Evil and Consort with witches, the Bible doesn't describe his sins clearly, except that he was guilty of pride and a desire to be an equal with God. The remainder of devil and witchcraft concepts have evolved over the ages and incorporate in-corporate much paganism. |